Current processing and information-storage capabilities inspire rethinking the entire art of design and control of telecommunications networks. The structural and operational complexity, and ensuing inefficiency, of current networks was necessitated by physical limitations of network nodes. With these limitations largely removed, new methods of network configuration and control need be investigated. In particular, there is a need to develop methods of efficient routing in a large-scale network, covering a large number of nodes.
The prior art teaches routing control in a network having numerous switching nodes. In particular, U.S. Pat. No. 6,944,131 teaches dividing a network having numerous switching/routing nodes into multiple domains where each domain has a domain controller selected from a set of domain controllers and a node may dynamically elect a preferred domain controller according to topological factors and network state. For example, a node may report to its nearest accessible domain controller as a primary domain controller, with the option to switch to any other domain controller in case of lost communication with the primary controller.
The prior art further teaches source routing. In particular, U.S. Pat. No. 6,744,775 teaches storing at each node a route set defining at least one route to each other node. The routes of a route set containing more than one route may be ranked according to some criterion.
The prior art also teaches numerous methods of disseminating link-state information. As an alternative to traditional routing-control methods based on broadcasting state-change of a link in the network, U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,265,085 and 8,837,497 teach generating an inverse routing table which identifies specific nodes of a network having routes traversing each inter-nodal link.